July 16, 2009

Dead Like

The hard look at the recording industry that one sees in Steve Knopper's Appetite for Self Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age, published earlier this year by Free Press, continues with Greg Kot's Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music (Scribner, 2009). Readers will find commentary on the major labels but also predictions on the future activities of bands and the use of music to sell concert tickets rather than recordings. Kot quotes Wilco's Jeff Tweedy: "In some weird way everything will be like the Grateful Dead."